h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a foul cough cough cough snottery sore head sore neck sore everything cold and my eyes are crawling like caterpillars.

Revision week kicks off tomorrow. I have a very full week and could really do without the whole hurty hurty mostly-green bodily fluids drip drip thang. It gets so that I'm coughing and choking and fighting for breath at night and I reckon that this mode of doing the common colds experience is what will finally finish me off some years down the line. Huh, morbid, eh?

Scotland is going through one of its periodic bouts of madness. The Reformation, witch-burning, the Covenant, Jacobitism, the Darien Bubble, the disruptions &c. Last year we had a mostly fairly-conducted referendum on independence. We had a record turnout - 86% - on an enlarged electoral register (taking in 16 & 17 year-olds) and by a convincing margin voted the electorate voted No. The Yes camp say the No camp lied to the Scottish people and that the UK establishment pulled out all the stops to rig a No vote, but the referendum was held in the year of the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn, with the Commonwealth Games having just been held in Glasgow, coming off the back of Homecoming 2014, so the Nats had the advantage of chosing the field and the rules and the timing. And if the No camp were maybe at times less than honest then the same can be said for the Yes camp.

Maybe the smartest thing about the timing of the referendum was its proximity to a UK General Election.

Anyhow, we now, in that General Election, face the prospect of the Nats picking up over 50 of the 59 Scottish Westminster seats with 45-50% of the popular vote on a turnout of, what? 65%? All thanks to the UK's unfit first past the post system. If the Nats do achieve a such-like result they are perfectly entitled to use their party representation at Westminster to forward their aims and interests. It would be an abomination and would amount to a de facto disenfranchisement of a significant portion of the Scottish electorate.

Labour is dead in Scotland. I can't say it isn't deserved. But it could take down the UK.

I can't claim to like nationalism. I've never seen a flag that has made me happy. On a cultural level I'm British and politically I'm mildly left of centre. My political credos are 'careful now' and 'down with this sort of thing.' Good grief, I nearly joined the SDP and regard John Major as an under-rated Prime Minister. I am seriously worried about the whole Weimar 1933 vibe that's goin' down...


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